"You don't know what it's like to look over there for years and years"--she flung out a hand to the horizon--"and say to yourself, day in and day out, 'Beyond that blue line is the world! Oh, when shall I be seeing the world?'" She stopped, and so did her father, turning now to look at the excited face. "Some people _never_ do," she said, with a kind of incredulous horror. "I can't sleep sometimes for thinking of how, here in New Plymouth, there are all these people, with all their senses (so far as you can see), and arms, and legs, and money, and _yet_ here they sit, just where they happened to be dumped--sit and wait till they die! Oh, it's like a nightmare, thinking of them! I feel if I don't run away quick while I'm awake and able to move, I shall freeze fast in my hole, too, and never be able to reach all the beautiful things that are waiting--out there!" She nodded over to the encircling hills. "_Think_ of it!" and the bright tears tumbled out of her shining eyes. "I don't want my little girl to miss any good thing," he said, presently, as they were nearing the town. "Then help me, father. Be kind to me." She came closer, and touched his sleeve. "But the things waiting for those who venture out there"--he turned a look full of foreboding on the blue horizon--"they aren't all, or even most of them, good things." "No, no. I've heard that; but I'll make the best of them." He shook his head. "You haven't a notion what a hard world it is for women--and for men, my dear. I want to save my little girl from--" "What does it matter if I _do_ have a hard time? I expect a hard time. Nobody could invent a time so hard that I couldn't bear it, and come out of it! Oh, you'll see--" "Perhaps, when you are older--" "Older!" Her face flashed quick alarm. "I'm dreadfully old already. I ought to have begun when I was twelve. There's little enough time to learn all I have to. If I don't run away quick--father, I feel it in my bones--something will happen; I shall _never_ go, I shall stick here like the rest, till--till the end." He glanced sideways at her. She met his eyes with a look he had never seen in them before. "Val--" he cleared his throat as they neared the Fort. "Father!" she interrupted quickly. "Don't ask me to say I won't run away. I couldn't keep such a promise." "That was not what I was going to suggest," he answered, completing a sudden mental readjustment. "I have nothing more to say against your plan, only I think it must be rather dull to run away alone. Suppose we run away together?" "Together, father?" "Yes; I--I think I'm on the track of a valuable discovery, and I must follow it up." "Oh--what?" "Well, you needn't speak of it to--a--to any one, just yet." "No, no, father." She was strung up to the great romantic revelation. "Well, I believe--indeed, I am sure--that all the hot gas and blinding electric light in use in most houses are very injurious to eyesight."